Calderon Says Mexico Reduced Net Migration to U.S. to Zero

By Eric Martin and Nacha Cattan -
Apr 24, 2012

Mexican President Felipe Calderon
said that better education, more job opportunities and broader
health-care availability in Latin America’s second-largest
economy have cut net migration to the U.S. to zero.

Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington,
Calderon, whose six-year term ends in December, said the North
American Free Trade Agreement signed two decades ago has
improved the economic outlook on both sides of the border. He
criticized U.S. immigration policy that he said is needlessly
restrictive and deprives U.S. farms of needed migrant labor.

“The fact is that net migration to the United States is
zero,” he said, referencing a Pew Research Center study
released yesterday that showed as many people are leaving the
U.S. for Mexico as moving north to the U.S. from Calderon’s
nation. “There’s a swing in terms of the opportunities. The
agricultural sector in the United States is losing a lot
competitiveness and opportunities due to the restrictions.”

After four decades that brought 12 million Mexicans to the
U.S., more than half illegally and in what Pew says is the
largest immigration wave to the U.S. from a single country, net
migration has dropped to zero and may have reversed, Pew’s
Hispanic center said in the study. From 2005 to 2010 about 1.4
million Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. and an equal number
moved from the U.S. to Mexico, Pew said.

The weakened U.S. job and housing construction market, a
decline in Mexico’s birth rate and changing economic conditions
in the Latin American nation are among the factors leading to
this standstill, Pew said.

For the first time in at least two decades, the number of
undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S. decreased significantly
from 2007 to 2011, falling to 6.1 from 7 million, according to
the study, which analyzed data from five Mexican government
sources and four U.S. government sources.

Calderon said Mexico’s investment in roads and airports has
helped boost the nation’s competitiveness and that the economy
is “in good shape” relative to the challenges the rest of the
world is facing.